Unit10: Social Problems in the United States

 Sections  Ⅰ. Racial Problems  Ⅱ. Poverty  Ⅲ. Drug Abuse  Ⅳ. Crime  Ⅴ. the abuse of power

 Focal points  1.Racial problems  2.Inequality in American society  3.Discrimination against blacks  4.The black "underclass"  5.Poverty as a social problem  6.Drug abuse  7.Social costs of drug abuse

 8.Crime  9.The profile of a typical criminal  10.Racial prejudice in the high rate of arrests  11.White-collar crime  12.The abuse of power by government  13.The abuse of power by corporations

Racial problems

 Racial problems  1. Existence of racial and ethnic subcultures  2.American society is a stratified one

 Americans are primarily a nation of immigrants, who or whose ancestors came from many parts of the globe. refugees adventurers captives

 1.some as refugees from religious and political persecution.  2.some as adventurers from the Old World seeking a better life.  3.some as captives brought to America against their own will to be sold into slavery. 有一些则是被抓获后违背他们的意愿运到美国, 被出卖为奴隶。

The slave trade routes

racial conflicts American culture - Common - Subcultures - Different - social problem

 Though people all share a common American culture, the nation contains many racial and ethnic subcultures with their own distinctive characteristics.  These differences have contributed to racial conflicts that have been a persistent social problem to American society.

 The U.S. was founded on the principle of human equality, but in practice American society is a stratified one, in which power, wealth, and prestige are unequally distributed among the population. It is divided into social classes that have varying degrees of access to the reward the society offers.

 For example, the richest fifth of American individuals and families owns more than three-quarters of the wealth in the U.S., whereas the lowest fifth owns only 0.2% of the wealth. The richest fifth of American families receives over 40% of the national income, whereas the poorest fifth receives only 5.2%.

Racial Problems

 discrimination against blacks  In American society, any group other than the dominant white Anglo-Saxon Protestant majority is a minority group. The largest of the racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S. is the blacks who make up about 11.7% of the population. The myth of their racial inferiority was propagated as a justification for their continued subjugation 征服, 镇压.

 The Northern states had all outlawed slavery by 1830, but in the Southern states, it was ended by the Civil War Lincoln’s emancipation of slaves in and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865.

 But after the abolition of slavery, many states passed segregation laws to keep the races apart in schools, housing, restaurants and public facilities, and institutionalized discrimination kept blacks in the lowest-paid jobs.

Dr. Martin Luther King

 After 1960s, many American blacks began to have a new mood: (1) Blacks felt that the black community ought to coexist with other groups. (2) Blacks felt that “black is beautiful”. (3) Blacks felt more and more proud of themselves.

Black pride

这是一名黑人妇女在华盛顿职业介绍会上收集工作介绍材料。

这是 2005 年 6 月 10 日，一名无家可归的黑人男子在美国东南部 的迈阿密南海滩钻进塑料袋里躲避飓风袭击。

2005 年， 10 月 13 日，美联社公布的图片显示，美国警 察当街殴打黑人嫌犯

这是 2004 年 10 月 17 日，一名黑人妇女手持印有马丁 · 路德 · 金头像的标语牌 参加集会。当天，上千名美国工人在首都华盛顿的林肯纪念堂前举行集会 ，要求增加工人就业机会、提高医疗保健水平。

这是 2005 年 10 月 8 日，在美国路易斯安那州新奥尔良市波旁大 街的一家酒吧外，几名白人警察正在殴打一名老年黑人男子。

 the black “underclass ”  The majority of the blacks today have failed to share in the general gains of progress made recently. The urban ghettos now contain a permanently impoverished “underclass” of habitually unemployed or underemployed black people.

2004 年 7 月 2 日，无家可归的黑人躺在美国纽约的街头。

 Many of them are young and unskilled. They live in cities where the unemployment rate for teenage black workers runs as high as 50% or about 8 times the rate for the American work force as a whole. This “underclass” could continue to persist, even in the absence of racial discrimination, in much the same way as other pockets of poverty persist—that is, for reasons of social- class inequality ．

 Living in an environment of poverty, decay, crime, drug addiction, joblessness, and hopelessness, this ghetto underclass offers an explosive potential for the future.

Poverty  America is a developed country with high- tech industries as well as professionals. Despite its celebrated affluence,social services in the united states compare unfavorably with those in most industrialized societies.

Poverty as a social problem  The U.S is one of the most wealthy countries in the world. Yet over 24 million people or about 10% of the population are living at or below the official poverty line, on incomes that the federal government considers insufficient to meet basic requirement of food, clothing, and shelter.

 There are millions more, living slightly above the poverty line, whose plight is not much better.

 Furthermore, the affluent majority seems indifferent to the problems of the poor. This raises some serious moral problems and inevitably creates fierce conflicts of interest and many political controversies. Therefore, poverty in the U.S becomes a social problem.

Drug Abuse  Drug abuse in the U.S. has come to be regarded as one of the most challenging social problems facing the nation. The drug issue always excites strong emotions of Americans because drug abuse is perceived as a major threat to American society, particularly to its younger members.

 Drug abuse is a social problem because it has a wide range of social costs. For example, ⑴ drug is closely related with crime, automobile accidents. ⑵ It has serious effects on individuals physically and mentally. ⑶ and the economic losses caused by drug abuse are great.

Drug Abuse in the United States

Drug abuse in the United States

Trainspotting   The movie tells about a crowd of young men live with a large number of drugs.  It is a very realistic and significant movie. It is a very realistic and significant movie.

I chose not to choose life. I chose something' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin? ( 我选择不要生活，我选择其他。理 由呢？没有理由。只要有海洛因，还要什么理由？ ” )

Crime  The profile of a typical criminal  According to the reports given by the FBI, those arrested for crimes are disproportionately likely to be ⑴ male, ⑵ young, ⑶ a member of a racial minority, ⑷ and a city resident.

 Reasons:  1. poor or unemployed  2. racial prejudice (the discrimination between blank and white).  3. undereducated  4.selective law enforcement.

Violent crime

 It has reached alarming proportion in U.S.  61%of all women feel unsafe in their own neighborhoods in night  45%of the population is afraid to walk alone at night near their won homes.  47% own gun,largely for self-protection. 47% own gun

美国是枪支开放的典型，普通市民都可以买到枪支。图为一名 美国女孩正在把玩她的新手枪。

Young people crimes

 For example, more blacks are arrested for crime than white people because a higher proportion of the black population is poor or unemployed and there are high correlations between poverty and the types of crime classified by the FBI as most serious.

 Also, racial discrimination in the enforcement of law causes more arrests of racial minority people. But if the white- collar crimes are included and if the authorities are more vigorous in their enforcement, the profile of a typical criminal would be  ⑴ older, ⑵ wealthier, ⑶ whiter and ⑷ more suburban than suggested by the FBI.

 white-collar crimes  White-collar crimes are those committed by higher income groups such as the crimes of  ⑴ fraud 欺诈, ⑵ false advertising 假广告, ⑶ corporate price fixing 控制市场价格, ⑷ bribery 行贿, ⑸ embezzlement 挪用公款, ⑹ industrial pollution, ⑺ tax evasion 偷税漏税 and so on.

 Yet the statistics provided by the FBI tend to overlook white-collar crimes. In fact, white-collar crimes are often ignored by law enforcement agencies. Some sociologists argue that the higher classes may actually have a higher rate of crime than the lower classes.

 Former President Nixon said that crime is America’s “number one enemy”. In 1970s, he was involved in the Watergate scandal, for which he was forced to resign from the presidency. Watergate scandal

the abuse of power  the abuse of power by government  People believe that public organizations in the U.S. sometimes work in concert to advance their own interests rather than those of the people. Government in America is widely distrusted for the lack of answerability.

 Americans were convinced that the Johnson and Nixon administrations were deliberately and systematically lying to the people in the war against Vietnam and in the Watergate scandal.  The FBI and the CIA are responsible for thousands of illegal acts. All these acts show the abuse of power by government.

the abuse of power  Two of the illegal acts by the FBI  ⑴ many burglaries of presumed critics of the administration 多次非法窃入被认为是批评政府的人员家中 and ⑵ widespread illegal wiretapping. 广泛地、非 法地使用窃听器。  The CIA infiltrated the civil rights and anti- war movements and compiled dossiers ['d ɔ siei] on many Americans. 美国中央情报局渗透到民权和反战运 动中，给数以千计的美国人私立档案。

 The CIA had tested variety of drugs, including LSD, on many people who were unaware that they were being used as guinea [‘gini] pig, and had caused several deaths in the process. CIA. 还在许多人身上进行各种实验，包括实验可使脑神经紊乱的麻醉药 LSD, 被试验的人自己完全不知道他们被当成试验品。在实验过程 中发生了几起死亡事件。

The FBI headquarter in Washington D.C.

The CIA headquarter in Maryland

 the abuse of power by corporations  The abuse of power by corporations is shown in the fact that these corporations are concerned with their own profits than with social responsibility, the quality or price of their products, or the truth of their advertising.

 They maintain professional lobbyists in Washington to ⑴ influence public officials behind the scenes. ⑵ argue for legislation to serve their own ends, ⑶ influence the appointment of officials, ⑷ block reforms they consider undesirable, ⑸ and often seem to have more say in the councils of government than the ordinary voter.

 Many Americans believe that “big business” has taken the reins of government away from Congress and the Administration”, and that “government is run by a few big interest groups looking after themselves.”

Goodbye